Research: Orphan Works Directive does not work for mass digitisation

trainwreck
Orphan Works directive: as useless as expected
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In 2012 the European Parliament adopted the Directive on ‘certain permitted uses of orphan works by cultural heritage institutions’. The directive intends to fill the gap between the mission of cultural heritage institutions to share cultural works to citizens, and the complex, costly, and sometimes impossible task of locating rightsholders to get permission for online publication of these orphaned yet still-in-copyright works.

COMMUNIA’s 2012 analysis of the directive showed that it was bound to be a train wreck. A preliminary comparative study of the situation in the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy undertaken by the EnDOW project reveals that the national implementations of the directive across Europe do not provide the much needed solution for the problem of orphan works.

Under the directive, cultural heritage institutions are allowed to publish works online for viewing (not re-use) after a ‘due diligence search’ has been performed, recorded, and submitted to the orphan works database at OHIM. Works that have been registered in this database can then be digitized and made available online under an exception to copyright. So far the project only published its initial results, but we can already see that this piece of legislation will most likely not contribute to large-scale use of orphan works by Europe’s Libraries, Museums & Archives.

The main reason for this is that the diligent search requirements established by the directive have been implemented by member states in such a way that the cost of undertaking a diligent search is prohibitive. The study collected over 210 sources, databases, and registers that need be checked in diligent searches in the UK alone. Researchers from Italy found 357 possible databases and registers. Of the 87 identified sources in the Netherlands, 40 were not freely accessible, and 36 of these required personal contact or a physical visit to an institute. Since the legislation requires cultural heritage institutions to be diligent, they need to check each and every source to be covered by the limited exception provided by the directive.

These results illustrate that the EU approach to orphan works is unreasonably complex and won’t adequately address the problem it’s trying to fix. This is further shown in the actual number of orphan works available through the OHIM Orphan Works Database, which currently only shows 1,435 registered works. More than half of them are in the collection of the Dutch EYE Film Institute (which has worked on rights clearance for these works since at least 2008).

The preliminary results of EnDOW provide evidence that the European Union has failed in this attempt to provide much needed digital access to Europe’s cultural heritage. Given that the Orphan Works Directive does not help with mass digitisation projects, this means that there is a continued need to provide legal mechanisms that allow cultural heritage institutions to make works in their collection available online.

Note: This contribution has been written by Maarten Zeinstra. Maarten is technical advisor to EnDOW. The ideas expressed in this post should not be attributed to EnDOW.

What the diary of Anne Frank can tell us about Text and Data mining

Allegorie op de scheikunde
Copyright must not be used to thwart scientific research
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Recently, everybody has been busy discussing the question of whether the Diary of Anne Frank will enter (or by now, has entered) the public domain on January 1st this year (Answer: It’s complicated). Surprisingly, the discussions surrounding the copyright in Anne Frank’s writings may shed some light on another contentious copyright policy issue: text and data mining. These insights are the result of a recent ruling by the District Court of Amsterdam in dealing with a dispute between the Anne Frank Stichting (owner of the physical diaries and operator of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam) and the Anne Frank Fonds (owner of the copyrights in Anne Frank’s writings).

The Anne Frank Stichting announced plans to publish an edition of Anne Frank’s texts online after the presumed expiration of the copyright on January 1, 2016. In response, the Anne Frank Fonds sued the Stichting over what it considered unauthorised reproductions of Anne Frank’s writings. The reproductions had been made by the Stichting as part of its preparatory research for the on-line publication after the new year. Initially, this seemed to be an attempt by the Fonds to thwart or delay the Stichting’s plans for an online edition.

However, during the course of the legal arguments it became clear that under Dutch law (which governs uses made by the Stichting), Anne Frank’s original writings would not enter the public domain in 2016. This is due to a transitional rule in the Dutch copyright act which states that works posthumously published before 1995 will retain copyright—in this case large parts of the original writings will only expire in 2037.

While this means that the Stichting had to shelve its plan to publish an online edition, the Fonds continued to press charges related to the reproductions (XML-TEI files) made by the Stichting in order to carry out its textual and historical research. The Stichting was sued alongside their research partner the Dutch Royal Academy of Science (KNAW). Both upheld the position that it did not require permission for making reproductions solely intended to enable its internal scholarship, claiming that copyright law should not be used to thwart scientific research. Continue reading →